Marketing Communications Strategy

Marketing
DMITRY DRAGILEV
Communications
Strategy
What It Is & How To Do It Right

Marketing Communications Strategy: What It Is & How To Do It Right
What is marketing communications strategy?
Marketing communications strategy is the strategy used by a company or individual to
reach their target market through various types of communication. It includes your
message(what is to be said), themedium (where it is to be said), and thetarget (to whom
your messageis reaching).
You might be wondering: what’s a marketing communications strategy that always works,
even without a budget?
Easy: build relationships with journalists to get press coverage, guest posts, and backlinks.
Marketing communications or Public Relations is the ‘Promotion’ bit of the “4P’s of
marketing” (product, place, price, promotion).
Since “marketing communications strategy” is a mouthful, most people just shorten it to
“PublicRelations” or “PR strategy”.
Usually, PR strategy means building top of mind awareness amongst your ideal
customers about theproduct or offer.
How you go about this will depend a lot on your experience, industry, and budget. If your
marketing plan has a budget of a million dollars to spare, you can reach out to your target
market with TV or Facebookads.
However, if you’re like most entrepreneurs, you want to promote your business without
breaking thebank.
And thereis no better way to do that than by managing your own PR campaign.
Wait, do you mean “freeas in ‘freelunch”?
Exactly! If you apply the methods in this post to your own marketing communications
strategy, you’ll learn how to build lasting relationships with journalists and in uencers,
get freepress, and acquiremorecustomers through a sustainableorganicapproach.
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www.criminallyprolific.com

What is a Marketing Communications Strategy?
As I mentioned earlier, marketing communications strategy de nes the entire range of
activities you will do to market your products. This includes everything from paid
marketing to PR.
Any integrated marketing communications strategy (IMC) should have three guiding
principles:
Brand alignment: Whatever marketing channel you choose should have the same
brand perception as yours. For example, if you sell luxury watches, build
relationships with journalists from TIME magazine, not those writing in your local
newspaper (unless you livein theHamptons!).
Customer alignment: Follow the oldest rule in marketing – ‘be where your
customers already are’. Pick channels where your customers are already active. If
you’re targeting younger millennials, advertise on social media platforms like
Instagram, not Facebook, and certainly not day-timeTV!
Budget alignment: Choose a marketing channel that ts your budget (obviously). If
you don’t have a budget, getting a print ad in WSJ will be out of your reach. But
perhaps you can get a free press mention on WSJ’s websiteby reaching out to the
journalists (as I’ll show you below).
Any large company’s marketing plan will have several campaigns on multiple channels
simultaneously. The combination of all these channels – PPC, social media, advertising on
TV, print, radio, etc. – is called the “marketing mix” of your marketing communications
strategy.
Smaller businesses, however, usually stickto oneor two marketing channels to reach their
target customers. Elseyou riskdiluting your budget and focus.
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Steps in Creating an Integrated Marketing Communications
Strategy
Keeping the above principles in mind, you should create an annual or bi-annual Integrated
Marketing Communications Strategy (IMC). Herearethekey steps to follow.
1. Understand Your Target Audience
Before you can create a strategic communications plan, you need to understand your
target audience.
Any marketing communications plan has to be formulated for a speci c group of target
customers. Your IMC has to definethis persona’s needs and characteristics.
The simplest way to do this is to study your existing customers through surveys,
interviews and so on. Ask:
What needs do most of yourcustomers havein common?
Why arethey buying yourproducts orservices?
These consumer insights are crucial for creating highly targeted marketing messages that
your persona can truly relateto.
Your integrated marketing communications plan should always follow an outside-in
approach, i.e. be centred around extensive customer analysis. You should invest time to
stay in touch with shifting customer needs even if you are doing business-to-business
marketing and you think you already know your customers very well. Avoid using an
inside-out approach which does not invest suf cient resources in researching and
analyzing customers.
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2. Define your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
Your USP is the foundation of your integrated marketing communications plan. The USP
should be re ected in every message your brand sends out across all communication
channels, whether it’s for PR, sales or content marketing.
A clear USP will ensure that your brand’s messaging is clear, consistent and recognizable.
It will also help you in crafting compelling media pitches.
Doing a SWOT analysis from the viewpoint of your target audience will help you frame
your USP. Ask:
Why will a consumerchooseyou overa competitorcompany?
Wheredo you fall short of yourcompetition?
Survey your existing customers about their purchase intention. Understand the rationale
behind thedecision-making process of your typical consumer.
3. Determine your Marketing Communications Mix
Marketing communications mix is the combination of channels you use to reach out to
potential customers.
Your marketing mix could include:
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onlineadvertising on AdWords, Facebook, etc.,
offlineadvertising on print media, billboards or TV,
direct marketing,
personal selling,
events,
sponsorships,
content marketing,
an annual sales promotion.
However, as I mentioned before, the most budget-friendly channel that drives the
maximum results is PublicRelations.
4. Define Branding Elements
Branding is a vital part of your IMC. It broadly includes two things.
At the most basic level branding is about having a consistent look and feel across all your
onlineand offlinemarketing materials such as your:
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website,
apps,
social platforms,
sales collateral,
direct marketing campaigns,
advertising campaigns,
business cards and so on.
However, at a deeper level, branding is about the core identity of your company. It’s about
what you stand for, and what you want people to recognize you as. For example, Apple’s
branding is all about cutting edge but extremely user-friendly technology. This identity
should bea part of every marketing communication your organisation sends out.
5. Define Success Metrics
Once you have decided on your promotional mix, you also need to plan the right set of
success metrics for all communication channels.
For instance, your success in PublicRelations can bemeasured by
thenumber of mentions on different outlets and blogs,
number of websitevisits or signups from each article,
number of backlinks acquired,
websitevisits from social media shares, etc..
These metrics will determine whether you are ful lling the key objectives of your
communications plans. So make sure you pick metrics that actually drive value to your
business, irrespectiveof what communication platforms you aremeasuring.
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For example, just becauseyou aremeasuring social media, don’t usevanity metrics such as
likes or retweets. Instead, go for websitevisits, leads acquired, etc.
6. Execution
That’s it! Once your plan is ready, you execute, measure your success and modify your
approach as necessary.
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How to Develop a Marketing Communications Strategy for
Your Startup
If you’re a small company or startup, your marketing communications strategy will be
vastly different from a large business’. The P&Gs and IBMs of the world can be on multiple
channels at once– onlineand offlineadvertising, publicrelations, social media etc.
For you, however, being effectiveand cost–effectivematter themost.
And oneof themost effectivemarketing approaches is to get freepress for your business.
This is the process of approaching in uencers, journalists, and bloggers with stories about
your company, your brand, and your products.
Depending on the target and your own goals, you can often turn this outreach into guest
spots on high-value publications, press mentions, and interviews – all things crucial for a
successful marketing communications strategy.
A story in a top media outlet is an excellent way to get in front of a vast number of
potential customers. It can work wonders for your brand awareness, generate website
visitors, signups and backlinks – all objectives you would have expected from advertising
or any other paid marketing channel.
A marketing communication plan for getting press has three steps:
1. Creating a story that works on your target channel (press) and aligns with your brand
image. Thestory should address theinterests of your ideal customers.
2. Finding press targets that have interest in your product and the same audience as
your target market
3. Building relationships with press targets and pitching them your ideas
I’ll cover thesesteps in detail below.
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Dmitry's Take
Just as “product-market” t is important for a business, “message-journalist” t is crucial
for successful marketing. Theangleor “spin” you useon a messagewill decideits audience.
Finding the right journalists or in uencers, therefore, should be a key part of your
marketing communications strategy.
I madeJustReachOut precisely for this purpose. Get in touch with me to see how we can
help you achieve“message-journalist” fit.
How to Create a Marketing Message
Your marketing message describes what you have to say and how you say it. That is, it
includes both thecontent of your story and its ‘spin’ or ‘angle’.
Both of these elements are crucial for virtually any communications plan or marketing
activity. A small change in your marketing message completely changes how and where
you market it.
For example, if you sell plain white tees, you might have three different angles to promote
them:
“Everyoneneeds plain whitetees; ours havetimeless cuts and go with everything”
“Everyoneneeds plain whitetees; ours arecheap and availablein bulk”
“Everyoneneeds plain whitetees; ours aremadefrom thefinest Egyptian cotton”
The core content of all these three messages is the same – “everyone needs plain white
tees”. However, the“spin” on them is radically different.
This impacts where and to whom you promote the message. If you emphasize the low cost
of your products, you’ll target press outlets that cater to cost-conscious customers.
Instead, if you emphasizequality, you’ll target outlets that cater to luxury buyers.
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Creating a compelling marketing message requires a deep understanding of your own
product, target customers, and brand values.
You’ll have to introspect. Ask yourself: what is my product about? Who would buy it?
What kind of brand do I want to create?
One great way to condense this marketing message into a press-ready pitch is to use the
‘mad libs’ approach outlined by theFounder’s Institute.
This involves de ning the company, its product, target audience, the problem it solves,
and how it solves it – all condensed into a single sentence (similar to a sales elevator
pitch).
Never use jargon or buzzwords in your one-sentence pitch. If your target audience –
journalists, bloggers, in uencers – have never heard the term (or heard it a billion times),
you don’t want it in thepitch.
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Here’s oneexampleof a terrible, jargon-riddled pitch that should have never seen the light
of day:
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In contrast, here’s onepitch that is short and to thepoint:
Doing this will ensure that your brand has have a short, snappy marketing message with
clear content and a well-defined angle.
This will maketheentireprocess to get press much easier.
Thenext step, as you’ll learn below, is to find theright targets for this marketing message.
How to Find Press Targets
Getting press today is very different from what it used to betwo decades ago.
For one, there were no “in uencers” and “bloggers” in the 1990s. You pitched journalists
in the mainstream media and hoped they would mention you in their newspapers, radio
stations and TV shows.
Today, however, anyone with an audience can be a “press target”. A small blogger with a
few thousand engaged followers is as legitimate a target as a big publication with a large
but disengaged audience.
Your search for press targets should takethis into account.
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Here are a few foolproof ways to nd prospects when creating your marketing
communications strategy:
1. People linking to similar content
If someone has linked to similar content in the past, there is a good chance they’ll write
about it again.
Start your search by nding a piece of content similar to yours. A Google search is a good
placeto go. Lookfor keywords that describeyour product, business or content.
For example, if you work in AI, searching for “AI startup” shows a number of media outlets
that might writeabout you:
All of thesewould begood targets for outreach.
You can find even moretargets by finding sites that havelinked to thestories above.
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Plug a story into a backlink research tool such as Ahrefs or Moz OSE. This will show you
everyonethat has linked to it:
Add theseto your list of prospects.
2. Reverse image search
If you’re promoting visual assets such as infographics, one of the best ways to nd
prospects is to look for media outlets and blogs that have linked to similar infographics in
thepast.
Start by going to Pinterest and looking for your target keywords +infographic.
If you’resharing a content marketing infographic, for instance, you might usethis:
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Once you nd an infographic, right click on it and select “Search Google for this image”.
This will open Google’s reverse search engine and show you everyone that has linked to
theimage.
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All of thesearegreat targets for getting backlinks and press.
3. Crunchbase
Crunchbase is a massive database of startups. It is also one of the most overlooked tools
for finding media targets.
Here’s how it works:
Go to Crunchbase.com and search for a top competitor
Scroll down to the‘Recent news & activity’ section
Makea list of all media outlets that havewritten about thecompetitor recently
For instance, herearesomepublications that havewritten about HubSpot:
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For large companies, this database is updated very regularly so you can get a lot of
prospects. You can also use it to see the different approaches you can take for reaching out
to different media outlets.
4. JustReachOut
Shameless plug, but JustReachOut is the tool I made to solve this exact problem. It does
all the media opportunities searching work for you so you can focus on the outreach and
relationship building.
To use it, just search for your primary keyword. You’ll see a list of journalists who’ve
written about thetopicrecently.
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Hit the‘Send Email Pitch’ button and you’ll seetheir email details as well.
JustReachOut works better than the other approaches since it focuses on journalists and
in uencers, not publications. It also dramatically cuts down your effort by showing you
email addresses and helping you craft a pitch.
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If you’ve ever done any sort of outreach, you’ll know that nding press targets and looking
up their email addresses takes a ton of time. If you want to personalize your message –
crucial for improving response rates – you’ll also have to keep track of what they wrote
about recently.
I madeJust Reach Out keeping these exact requirements in mind. You get all the essential
data you need to pitch journalists, along with ready-made pitches. Nothing more, nothing
less.
There are a number of other less effective tactics for nding press targets. I covered some
of them earlier in my post on how to pitch journalists.
Once you have your list of prospects, nd their email addresses. Here’s a detailed post on
how to find anyone’s email.
Next comes the most important part of getting press: building relationships and pitching
your story.
How to Get Press by Building Relationships
Thepublicrelations field is a built on relationships.
You might have seen the stereotype in movies – a busy PR person glued to the phone,
thumbing through a Rolodex thicker than two packs of cards.
The reality isn’t far from the truth (though emails have replaced phones and CRMs have
replaced Rolodexes). Getting the word out to journalists and in uencers is still all about
relationships in any marketing communications strategy.
As an entrepreneur, you are an unknown quantity to any journalist, in uencer, or investor.
You might have the best cold email pitches in the world, but since they don’t know you,
they’reunlikely to respond.
Dmitry's Take
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You’ll also nd that the top journalists almost never respond to unsolicited cold emails.
You might get a response from DavesNewTechBlog.com, but if you want to land on
TechCrunch, you’ll haveto befamiliar to thejournalist.
It’s not that journalists and in uencers aren’t nice people. They’re just too bombarded
with emails. As Fractl’s study pointed out, most journalists get more than 100 pitches per
day.
70% of journalists also prefer collaborating on a story rather than be pitched something
fully baked.
Essentially, this means that you can’t simply send out cold pitches to top journalists. It’s
far less effectivethan sending cold sales emails.
Instead, you haveto:
Stand out from thedozens of competing pitches, and
Collaboratewith thejournalist to develop a story idea
To do both of these, you haveto do onething. You guessed it: build relationships.
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How to Build Relationships
The secret to building a relationship with an in uencer is the same as building any other
relationship:
Bevaluable.
This single rule should be the guiding force in your marketing communications strategy.
All your interactions with journalists, bloggers, in uencers, investors, prospective
customers, etc. should follow it.
In psychology, the“principleof reciprocity” – that you do unto others as they do to you – is
even considered oneof thepillars of persuasion. Themoreyou givepeoplesomething they
want, themorethey’relikely to do what you askof them (in our case, publish your story).
Before I share strategies to offer value, there are two principles you should adopt in your
PR efforts:
1. Segment Your Prospect
Would you use the same approach to reach out to Tim Ferriss as you would for a no-name
blogger?
Of coursenot.
Your rst step in your marketing communications strategy should be to segment your list
into threecategories:
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High-priority: These are your ‘whales’ – high-value targets that have massive
in uence and reach. Think of in uencers like Gary Vaynerchuk and journalists like
TechCrunch’s Matt Burns.
Mid-priority: These are prospects that would be known names to people within the
industry, but don’t havethenamerecognition of the‘whales’ above. Usually, they run
websites with moderate authority but have a growing audience. More importantly,
they’reoften followed by high-priority targets.
Low-priority: These are targets with new-ish websites and limited audiences. They
don’t have a lot of impact on getting you ‘viral’ but can act as a source of links and
social proof.
Segmentation will help you align your efforts with the quality of the target. Maximize the
time and effort on high-priority targets. Use scalable tactics for reaching out to low-
priority targets.
2. Personalize Your Outreach
Sending personalized emails is thenumber onething you can do to build relationships.
Theproblem is that personalization isn’t scalable.
Onesolution is to personalizeaccording to thetarget’s priority.
For your high-priority targets, always use a personalized conversation starter. This
should be a unique, handwritten email that initiates a conversation by giving something of
valuewithout any ask.
The goal of this ‘conversation starter’ is to establish yourself on the prospect’s radar. The
‘ask’ will comelater.
For mid-priority targets, throwing in a single personalized line at the start of the pitch
is often enough. This helps you stand out from the army of PR agents sending out emails
from templates.
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Therest of theemail can befrom a templateand should includean ask.
For low-priority targets, personalize the name and, if possible, their website name. The
rest of theemail can just bea template.
It’s also a good practice to work your way up from low/mid-priority targets to high-
priority ones. You can use your coverage in lower priority targets to build social proof and
reel in bigger publications. This “snowball” effect is a big part of any successful marketing
communications strategy.
You might now bewondering: how do I start conversations and offervalueto journalists?
I’ll sharefour approaches below.
How to Start Conversations with Journalists
As I said earlier, the best way to build relationships is to give your targets something they
value.
While this will obviously vary from target to target, there are a few things most
influencers, bloggers, and journalists want:
Exposure
Interesting stories and content
Feedbackand compliments
Answers to their questions
I’ll sharesomeways to usetheseapproaches to build relationships below:
1. Share useful content
Journalists live and breathe content. Any writer who cares about his work likely scours
theinternet for interesting stories and useful content.
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If you can point the journalist to content that is relevant to their needs, they’ll appreciate
it.
To do this, you need to do some quick research on the journalist’s interests and recent
stories.
Most journalists will clearly identify their area of interest on their public pro les. For
example, Darrell Etherington of TechCrunch notes his reporting areas in his Twitter bio:
This means that Darrell will likely beinterested in stories related to transportation.
You can also go through their most recent stories to see what kind of topics they’ve been
interested in lately.
In Darrell’s case, he’s written a lot about automotivetech companies likeTesla and Uber:
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If you send Darrell a story about Musk’s amethrowers or a ying car, there’s a chance
he’ll find it useful, getting you onestep closer to establishing a relationship.
I used this approach to connect with Darrell earlier. I sent him a link to a story on a topic
he’d shown interest in (Philips Hue). He responded by writing about the story later on
TechCrunch:
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It’s important that you do this without any expectations. Don’t have an ask; just share
good content. “Giving” should be the cornerstone of your marketing communications
strategy.
Don’t try to sneak in a link to content you created either. There will be a time for self-
promotion later; for now, just begenerous by sharing quality content.
Dmitry's take
If you’re going to share content with journalists, pick up something that is both
substantial and not easy to nd. Don’t just send them the latest article you saw on
NYTimes; chances are, they’veseen it already.
Keep a list of top websites that regularly featurecontent from your journalist’s industry. If
you’re targeting business bloggers, for instance, you might share something from
HBR.org.
For best results, tie the content to what the journalist wrote about recently. A list of their
most recently published pieces – as shown on Just Reach Out – can help.
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2. Promote them on Quora
A surefireway to hookin an influencer is to givethem freeexposure.
However, most marketers mess this up by writing about the in uencer on their own blog
and sending them a linkto it.
While they’ll likely be chuffed to see their name on your site, this approach has an element
of sel shness to it. There is an expectation that they’ll have to promote your website in
exchangefor themention.
The trick is to be generous by giving them exposure on sites that a) you don’t control, and
b)havea largeaudience.
And oneof thebest sites to do this is Quora.
Here’s how it works:
Search for your target keyword on Quora. Look for a question that is fairly open-ended,
yet specificenough to inviteexpert opinion.
For example, if you’re writing about content marketing, this would be a good question
(you know it’s a good onebecauseNeil Patel has answered it):
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Next, write a detailed answer to the question. Most importantly, include a quote or
referenceto theinfluencer you’retrying to target.
For instance, I wanted to reach out to a Venture Beat writer so I included a quote from her
in my answer:
Now reach out to the in uencer and tell them about your Quora answer (or a tweet, as in
theexamplebelow):
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This approach works better than simply dropping the in uencer’s name in your own blog
post. It shows that you care enough about their work to not only read it, but to also
promoteit on a platform you don’t even own.
The result is a solid foundation for building a relationship as part of your marketing
communications strategy.
3. Share data and insight
Journalists love data, especially if it can be used to support something they’ve written
about earlier.
If your organisation has some unique data or insights, sharing it with a journalist or
influencer is a great way to get an “in”.
The trick to make this work is to tie the data to something they covered recently. If they
wrote about poor conversion rates of outreach campaigns, and you have your own data
showing otherwise, shareit with them.
For example, OKCupid referenced a journalist’s recent posts on “loneliness” to share data
about dating preferences:
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But what if you don’t havedata of your own?
In that case, you can createuniquecontent specifically for theinfluencer.
I used this tactic extensively to promote Polar. We created unique polls bloggers could
plug into their recent posts to spur engagement.
Noticehow I closed theemail with a question?
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That’s a great way to get a response.
4. Answer their questions
What if instead of pitching journalists, you could get them to pitch you instead?
Sounds impossible, but that’s precisely what HARO (Help A Reporter Out)does.
HARO connects journalists with sources. Every day, it sends out an email with a list of
requirements from different journalists. Sources who t their requirements can jump in
and leavea response.
For example, here’s a recent requirement for blockchain experts posted on HARO:
If you had a blockchain product, this would besomeof theeasiest press you could ever get.
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The problem with HARO is that it queries can be hard to nd. It is not searchable; you
haveto keep an eyeout for thenewsletters they send twicea day.
To solve this problem, I added a HARO search engine to JustReachOut. Instead of digging
through newsletters, just enter your target keyword and find relevant opportunities.
This makes the entire marketing communications process drastically easy and gets your
organisation into somehigh-profilemedia publications.
Dmitry's take
“Be where your customers already are” is Business 101, and it applies equally to PR. Be
wherejournalists arealready asking questions. In our case, it’s HARO.
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Digging through HARO’s lengthy twice-a-day emails, however, can get tiring very quickly.
So we incorporated a HARO search engine in Just Reach Out to make the process much
morestreamlined.
Using Relationships to Get Press
If you’ve put in the hard work and built relationships with journalists as part of your
marketing communications strategy, you’realready far ahead of thecompetition.
You’ll nd that it’s signi cantly easier to get people to respond to you if you’ve
communicated with them before.
For one, instead of sending a fresh email, you can simply reply to your older conversation
thread. When they see that you’ve spoken to them earlier, it’s guaranteed that they’ll at
least look.
Two, there is the principle of reciprocity at play. If you’ve been nice to them in the past,
thereis an implicit obligation on them to return thefavor.
After you’ve had a couple of touches (the more important the in uencer, the more touches
you’ll need), send them an email referencing your earlier conversation. But this time,
includea clear ask, likethis:
If your pitch is good and of interest to them, most will happily respond.
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The best part about this approach is that your pitch doesn’t have to be perfect. Marketers
spend hours following cold email pitch tips, but if your targets have already warmed up,
you don’t haveto useany clever “hacks”.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that you can send a lazy pitch. You should still be succinct,
offer value, and usea strong subject line.
Follow the tips in this post to learn how to create a compelling pitch to journalists and
influencers.
Out of all marketing and communications approaches, there’s nothing as valuable as these
press relationships!
Over time, these relationships will get you valuable media coverage that will far outweigh
what you can achieve even with a huge advertising budget.After all, a story in a top outlet
brings far morecredibility than any self-promotional advertising campaign!
It’s thebest marketing investment you will ever make!
Over to You
Getting press, backlinks, and guest blogging opportunities should be the cornerstone of
any startup’s marketing communications strategy. It’s way more cost-effective than
advertising, scalable, and helps you build the long-term relationships necessary for
promoting your business.
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